Abe: A Novel of the Young Lincoln

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The past Lincoln kept hidden: A novel that reveals the sources of his legendary compassion and brilliance

A stunning work of historical imagination, Abe immerses the reader in the isolating poverty and frontier violence that shaped Abraham Lincoln’s character. Marked by the death of his beloved mother and the struggle to keep reading and learning in the face of his father’s fierce disapproval. Abe perseveres, growing into the man who changed the course of American history.

Abe comes of age in the course of a dramatic flatboat journey down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Along the way, Abe and his companions encounter slavery firsthand and experience the violence—and the pleasures—of rough river towns, plantations, and the cities of Natchez and New Orleans. Numerous historical figures make appearances alongside the colorful characters of the Mississippi: preachers and vigilantes, planters and thieves, prostitutes and lady reformers. Transformed by what he has seen and done, Abe returns to make his final break with his father and to step out of the wilderness into New Salem—and history.

Richard Slotkin’s Abe draws deeply on historical scholarship, but it is not biography. Instead, it is a vivid, persuasive re-creation of the life as young Lincoln might have lived it, and of the people, scenes, and influences that helped produce the character and conscience of the man often called the greatest of all Americans.